What I Read in 2025 (Part 4)

Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here, Part 3 is here.

King Lear

Shakespeare

Obviously one of the greatest plays ever written, & probably my favorite among Shakespeare's tragedies (I'm too much like Hamlet to have that as my favorite!). I'll just restrict myself to one thing here: my standard Shakespeare since I started reading him decades ago has been the Signet Classic edition. I bought myself each volume, long ago, until I had all 40, even having to ask a local bookstore owner to order for me the ones I could not find on occasional trips to the mall's B Dalton or Walden books (remember those?). I have, & have read, other editions, but Signet Classic was my basic. Time is taking its toll on everything & my copies are starting to fall apart. This time around my copy of Lear literally split in two, just like his kingdom. I sure did get my 75 cents worth out of that purchase, though.

All's Well That Ends Well

Shakespeare

I've actually already re-read this one! I'll tell a little story about the one time I saw it, on a far too rare trip to London, long ago. It was at the Royal Shakespeare Company, & the director made the brilliant choice to set it during the First World War, a time of great social upheaval, particularly in the roles of women, which put Helena's work as a doctor in a social perspective. Peggy Ashcroft played the Countess Rousillon, in her last stage appearance. I knew who she was & was excited to get a chance to see her on stage. And she was absolutely extraordinary. She was lambent, & I mean that literally: she seemed to glow with an internal light. Her performance is what I mostly remember from that long-ago staging. I have never seen anything like her luminosity, before or since. For a while I cynically, briefly, thought that it was just stage lighting. But then I realized that that couldn't be the case – if it were, everyone would have themselves lit that way. If you had enough money, you'd have the proper lighting follow you around wherever you went, from soiree to drugstore, the effect was that extraordinary. So I bow to the shining memory of the great Peggy Ashcroft.

The Two Noble Kinsmen

Shakespeare & John Fletcher

This one is also a bit static, at least in reading, though I've seen a DVD from the Globe & it seems to work quite well on stage. It's difficult not to feel that at points probably Fletcher is playing off his collaborator's previous work (specifically, the madness of the Jailer's Daughter, which hearkens back to Ophelia's), & of course the whole thing is working off Chaucer. It does have one line that has reverberated in my head for years: "On the sinister side the heart lies". This is on the one hand simply a factual statement: sinister means left, & the heart is on the left side of the body. On the other hand, sinister has some obviously threatening connotations, & lies also does double-duty as "location" & "telling untruths". A haunting set of puns.

The Tempest

Shakespeare

Another work whose familiarity may disguise for us how enchanting & very strange it is.

Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong's Rendezvous with American History

Yunte Huang

A very interesting biography/cultural history centered on Anna May Wong, a brilliant performer whose career was limited by, guess what, American racism. Huang has also written books about Chang & Eng, the original "Siamese" twins (now usually called conjoined twins) & about Charlie Chan; he conceives of this book as part of a trilogy about the Chinese-American experience as seen through these particular lenses. I found it an absorbing read, though occasionally there were some assertions that threw me: one that sticks in my mind is that the Supreme Court ended Prohibition. It took a constitutional amendment to do that, not a Court decision. That's a relatively minor point. I'd be interested in reading his other books.

Time Regained

Proust

There's always the feeling, each time one finishes something like In Search of Lost Time & puts it on a list like this, that there should be some sort of profound summation. Instead I've realized that this novel has seeped so deeply into my viewpoint & even personality that it is impossible to dismiss it with a summation, no matter what profundities I manage to throw in there. It is simply one of the books of my life. As I assume I mentioned earlier, I've read it about every ten years or so, since back when it was regularly referred to with Scott Moncrieff's evocative & Shakespearean but inaccurate title Remembrance of Things Past. When I finished this time I will admit I wondered if maybe I was now done with reading & re-reading Proust, but lately I find myself referring to different themes & scenes & pondering different elements & I'm thinking now it will make its way back into the rotation at some point, & I will see how I have changed since our last encounter, & how it has shifted its prisms during my time.

Cymbeline

Shakespeare

I have the feeling this play used to be a lot more popular (maybe just on stage) than it is now (I'm basing this on the delightful collection of Shaw's Shakespeare reviews, which I read avidly many years ago). I've always loved it, partly for its mishmash of different times & places & partly for the amazingly convoluted finale, which step by step unravels the absurdly complicated plot (& as if it weren't complicated enough, right before Act 5 begins Shakespeare throws in some more, completely gratuitous, complications in the form of a dream sent to Posthumus in prison).

Radical Hollywood

Paul Buhle & David Wagner

An encyclopedic look at attempts to convey leftist political messages in Hollywood films. Not surprisingly, despite the political hay made by right-wingers over Communist (or generally leftist) influence on American entertainment, it was a constant, often unsuccessful struggle against timidity & the self-interest of capitalism. The progressivism was generally economic (rather than, say, concentrated on civil rights), which may have made it more suspect. For popular entertainment, Hollywood sure doesn't push for the people (or The People, to use the lingo, which of course refers only to some of the people). Nice to see some respect paid to these idealists, who often suffered for their attempts to bring some thoughtful political depth to mass entertainment.

Coriolanus

Shakespeare

This is another one that gets more fascinating each time I encounter it (which is often enough so that, again, my copy is falling apart). The complex portrayals of both aristocrats & plebes is just endlessly prismatic. Since I mentioned seeing Peggy Ashcroft on stage, I will name-drop seeing Ian McKellan in the title role of this play, also on a trip to London. As I was leaving the show, I overheard two old ladies, one telling the other that she wasn't sure about McKellan's looks, as she had always pictured Coriolanus as "a big, rough, hairy fellow". No idea where she got this, or what she got out of the play, but considering his complicated relationship with his formidable mother, a certain dependent boyishness seems essential to the role.

What Is Remembered

Alice B Toklas

I had read this many years ago, & reread it last year as I was thinking about it in the context of all the other Stein & Stein-related books I've been reading. It's quite poignant, evocative & often rather poetic, but also cagey: Toklas tells what she wants to tell, & the book ends when Stein's life does. An interesting sidelight into a relationship that was more complex than it sometimes seems. (I think I first read this in high school – on my own, of course, not as part of a class – & it's linked with the memory of my French teacher mentioning once the days when he worked in a bank in Paris & one day a fellow teller drew his attention to a dried-up old lady at another window: "That's the famous Alice B Toklas," he informed my future teacher. I wonder if anyone in the class besides me was dazzled by  this glimpse of a vanished world.)

The Book of Revelation: A Biography

Timothy Beal

This book is part of a fascinating series published by Princeton University Press, Lives of Great Religious Books, which are basically reception histories of some of the world's key spiritual texts. This is a relatively brief book that covers a lot of ground: the background of Revelation, its strange & sometimes controversial fit with the rest of the approved books of the Bible, the ways it has been interpreted, not just theologically but politically & cinematically, & the some of the author's own history as someone who grew up in an evangelical Protestant household that believed in the end-times. In addition to the words of John, Beal also covers visual interpretations of the book (& it is one of the more vividly visual books of the Bible), from the famous woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer to movies of the sort that play not at the cineplex but at evangelical churches. Rich & engrossing.

Measure for Measure

Shakespeare

I've always found this one of the most fascinating plays in the canon. I had read it a couple of times before going to college, but I read it again of course for more than one class; I recall one discussion session in which the opening topic was whether Isabella was "frigid" or not (I will mention right now that the professor was a woman, & a self-described feminist). Something about this approach –starting off with Isabella's presumed sexual peculiarities – struck me as wrong-headed, but I wasn't quite able to formulate my objections (&, being fairly timid about speaking in class, I'm not sure I would have said anything anyway). The point, to me, was that it didn't matter what Isabella's sexual make-up was: she was being coerced by Angelo into having sex with him, & that's rape, regardless of what was going on with her (& she was, of course, planning to enter a strict order of nuns). I'm not saying that the class was defending Angelo, but they were starting with "what's the deal with Isabella?", which struck me as t he wrong way around. What's the deal with Angelo, who, in a city overfull with sex workers, has to single out & victimize the one woman who, in austerity & integrity, most resembles him? Why does he need to humiliate this mirror of himself? Years later, during the notorious confirmation hearings for the notorious Clarence Thomas, I read an editorial that compared him to Othello. That struck me as a stretch, & a comparison prompted mostly by their mutual skin color (at this point I have no idea who the writer was or what newspaper or magazine I read it in). I remember thinking, no, he's like Angelo: why is he singling out a woman who is a mirror of his own experiences? (Yes, clearly, I believed Thomas's word against his.)

The Winter's Tale

Shakespeare

This is one of the plays that has become hugely popular in our own time. I don't think it was big on the 19th-century stage. I love the artificiality of it, the very sophisticated use of the simplest theatrical tricks: someone dressed as Time enters as announces that 16 years have passed. OK! Given the way many of us experience time, I find something like that in a way more realistic than the painfully mundane "kitchen sink" dramas. The telescoped portrayal of Leontes's jealousy is a dramatic & psychological tour de force. I saw one performance that brought out the boyishness of the King (meaning also a sort of sexual immaturity & insecurity, & an almost romantic attachment to his friend Polixenes) that made it all quite convincing (in fact the character reminded me of someone I knew who was struggling with various sexuality issues). Another interesting role is Paulina. She always goes too far, she's even a bit of a nag, but she has a good & generous heart in many ways. I've seen performances that didn't bring this out, which was a mistake: in the scene in which she persuades the guards to let her through with the baby, she harangues the man but at the end realizes she's maybe gone too far with someone who is essentially powerless & she assures him she'll protect him from the consequences of his action. In this particular performance, she sniped those lines at him contemptuously & with condescension. What a mistake. I knew then it would be a fairly long evening.

The World of Christopher Marlowe

David Riggs

With the end of Shakespeare's plays approaching, I decided I'd reread Marlowe, so this was prep work.  Marlowe had a short & not always well documented life; this book is an excellent survey, as its title suggests, of the world in which he grew up: how a poor boy went to University on a scholarship, what he would study there, how he would try to make a living, the sort of intellectual currents he would have come across, & how those are reflected in his plays. Riggs suggests that Elizabeth I had knowledge of the plan to murder Marlowe: a far greater mark against her, if so, than the execution of Mary Queen of Scots.

Camera Man

Dana Stevens

About Buster Keaton. Stevens had the clever idea of using Keaton's life, through vaudeville, cinema, & television, & his experiences with writers, studio executives, & others, as an angle on a sort of media-centered history of the 20th century. Entertaining & thoughtful, though I value his film College more highly than she does (maybe it just hits home more for me) & I disliked her rather trendy criticisms of Chaplin, which are mostly based on his sexual history (there's no indication that any of his female friends was unwilling, even if we find some of them, as did some of his contemporaries, a bit young for him).

Hamlet

Shakespeare

Saved this one for last. In the odd way in which certain artists or artworks, while retaining their high position, get put slightly out of the spotlight by other artists or artworks – for example, a few years ago, I stopped hearing about Beethoven as the pinnacle of Western composers, & while he wasn't cast aside, the top spot was increasingly assigned to Mozart, at least by some –I have a feeling that the play now considered the height of tragedy is King Lear rather than Hamlet. Perhaps its almost nihilistic bleakness & absurdity speak more to our century.

Make Believe: The Broadway Musical in the 1920s

Ethan Mordden

This was an unexpectedly solid history. I had picked up the notion (from where I don't know) that Mordden was mostly going to offer anecdotes of a bitchy/amusing variety, but the knowledge is detailed & wide-reaching. He did a similar volume for the ensuing decades, up until I think the 1970s, & I've added them to the relentlessly growing TBR pile. This one made me want to find recordings of all the works he mentioned.

A Drifting Life

Yoshihiro Tatsumi

I was wandering through the Biography/Autobiography section of the library & saw a thick paperback volume that stood out as it looked like manga rather than a regular biography, so I took it out. I was not familiar with Tatsumi before I read this, but he is  indeed a manga artist, one who helped create an audience for darker stories. This is a wonderful book: a history of manga, a history of post-war Japan, a history of a family, & a history of a young man finding his way in the world & discovering his path as an artist, all evocatively written & drawn, with a sense familiar to readers of Japanese literature of this world as evanescent & in many ways puzzling.

OK, enough for this round.

Friday Photo 2026/14

 

a tree in Orinda, early spring

Schwabacher Recital Series #1: Italienisches Liederbuch

Yesterday at the Taube Atrium Theater, the Merola Opera Program & the San Francisco Opera Center presented the first of this season's three Schwabacher Recitals; this one, curated by Nicholas Phan, featured pianist Ji Youn Lee, soprano Mary Hoskins, & baritone Olivier Zerouali. The program had not been announced in advance, so the first pleasure was finding out that we would be hearing Hugo Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch, a collection of 46 mostly brief lieder to words by Paul Heyse "based on anonymous Italian poetry", which I've heard on recordings but which I've rarely (maybe never? unless it was decades ago, in another time & place?) encountered live. The second pleasure was how successful, how thoughtful, charming & moving, & inspiriting, the concert was.

I'm guessing that the "curating" part of Phan's role was not only in picking the repertory but also in directing the performers; the songs are not explicitly about an on-going story, but instead about many stories flitting in & out of possibility, & the two singers listened to each other attentively, with subtlety & care, to the apt, often dramatic or witty, accompaniment of Lee's playing. Her Steinway was to the center left (audience left) of the stage; to its right were two black chairs on either side of a small round café-like table with a black tablecloth, topped with two glasses of water (Zerouali drank more of his than Hoskins did of hers) & a few candles. Lee wore a stylish black ensemble; Zerouali wore a black tuxedo with an open-necked shirt, & Hoskins wore a velvety forest-green gown (one of her songs mentions wearing green, a possible inspiration). The large back wall featured a series of close-ups of paintings, some famous (Botticelli, Munch) & some not so much, a different art work for each song, printed in soft blacks & greys against a purple background, the art work reflecting & commenting on the content of the songs & the lovely shade of purple evoking the musical period in which Wolf worked; the effect was subtle & evocative. The words of the songs were displayed in large clear white type against the dark background of the art works.

I think I have only once before been to a recital which used surtitles, which have now become obligatory in opera houses. I am all in favor of using them in recitals, though I understand there are various difficulties, including cost, that prevent surtitles from becoming standard for recitals. It's worth the trouble, from an audience member's point of view, if only for sparing us the constant rustling & riffling & folding of programs with the words in them. (I'm always amazed by the number of habitual recital-goers who seem unable to figure out how the songs are arranged on the word-sheets, leading to endless flipping & scanning & searching, generally during the music). I was also grateful that in his brief opening remarks, Phan politely but clearly asked us not to applaud until the very end. I don't consider it the end of what passes for civilization if applause arrives at the "wrong" moment, but it is obtrusive, often feels merely de rigueur, & would be especially disruptive when the songs are all relatively brief (our 46 were covered in roughly an hour & 15 minutes).

The soprano is sometimes flirtatious, sometimes annoyed at her straying lover; the baritone is seductive, sometimes puzzled; both are sometimes angry, sometimes sweet. The later songs sometimes reference Paradise, in presence or in absence, a singular marker in Catholic Italy. Unlike lieder that expose the intimate feelings of a single heart, these songs are usually addressed outwards, to another (perhaps this is part of their extroverted "Italian" nature, in the eyes of an Austrian like Wolf), though there is not a clear dramatic arc or storyline in this cycle, but rather a variety of moods & situations; potent little dramas are implied, then slip away. The interplay between Hoskins & Zerouali reflected the on-going variety of the songs; nothing was overdone, nothing detracted from whichever was singing at the time, but both were at all times really present & responsive to the other. Both singers have appealing voices, Zerouali vigorous & forceful, Hoskins with a powerful but pure tone. Their attention to the words & their meanings was heightened by the audience's ability to follow along easily with the surtitles.

I do find the Taube Atrium Theater an odd space, with some acoustic peculiarities. There were only a couple of brief moments when the singers seemed to let the big size of their voices escape the reality of the room a bit. These were very tiny flaws in a collection of jewels. All concert-goers know the peculiarities of the interactions between the day they're having & the performance: does one lift or bring down the other, pull one somewhere else or seem like more of the same: each performance will be different for each audience member. So I'll just say I was having a fairly strange & not all that good day, & this concert was a welcome & delightful respite.

Museum Monday 2026/13

 

detail of Family II by Hung Liu, now in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Another Opening, Another Show: April 2026

April is National Poetry Month, so here is my favorite experience with poetry & algorithms: I was trying to recall a line by Ezra Pound, & I couldn't remember if it was "pull down thy vanity" or "tear down thy vanity" (it's "pull down)". So I went to the google machine & typed in one version. Almost immediately, I was swamped with an astonishing number of ads for bathroom renovations This flummoxed me until I noticed that a few of them were trying to sell me a new "vanity set", a term I had not heard in decades. That was not the vanity I was seeking to pull down! That's an algorithm for you: you're looking for poetry & are given plumbing.

The other thing floating around has been Timothée Chalamet's remark that no one cares about opera & ballet (I've heard differing versions, one that "no one cares" & one that "no one gives a fuck": same difference, but one tries to be accurate). My initial thought was that this was an obvious "don't feed the trolls" moment, but I've seen his remark referenced quite a bit lately, though I'd thought that one of the many things people don't care / don't give a fuck about would be the opinions of a wanna-be hipster sprat like Chalamet. (And in the interests of the accuracy I just praised: my initial thought was actually, "Oh, Little Timmy, you're not hot enough to be that stupid".) Most responses make the obvious point that both art forms have passionate fans, but I've also seen a few that make the point that occurred to me, which is that people also don't really care / give a fuck about Chalamet's chosen art form, the movies.

People in general, besides being busy, are often interested in entertainment, but not always much interested in art, especially art that is obscure or difficult or in some other way not mainstream (meaning, not corporate-sponsored). Just my experience, & I don't mean this in a negative or dismissive way; you can lead a full, meaningful life without ever hearing a single aria or reading a page of Shakespeare. But please don't tell me that because of that, those things don't, or shouldn't, mean anything to me.

So let's all go out there in this month replete with poetry & ignore the algorithms & find something weird, offbeat, difficult, peculiar, & all our own.

(Also: the 23rd of April is the day traditionally celebrated as Shakespeare's birthday. For those who observe: you know what to do!)

Theatrical

ACT presents ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| by Eisa Davis, directed by Pam MacKinnon, about four teenage girls at a Berkeley music program for girls, at the Strand Theater from 12 March to 19 April.

The Oakland Theater Project presents Sondheim's Assassins, directed by Weston Scott, from 21 March to 5 April.

The New Conservatory Theater Center presents How to Make an American Son by Christopher Oscar Peña, directed by Ben Villegas Randle, exploring tensions between a teenage boy & his Honduran-born father, & that's 3 April to 10 May.

Golden Thread Productions offers a co-production with Crowded Fire Theater, in partnership with Art2Action: A Festival of Palestinian Art, from 9 to 19 April at the Potrero Stage in San Francisco; click here for details.

Amadeus Never Gives Me the Blues, written & performed by Amy Bouchard, accompanied by Daniel Lockert, developed with & directed by David Ford, explores the dilemmas of an aspiring opera singer, using music from operas, Broadway, & the American Songbook, & that plays at The Marsh San Francisco from 11 April to 23 May.

On 17 - 18 April at the Chan National Queer Arts Center, you can see the Songs & Stories of Stephen Schwartz, featuring composer Schwartz (Wicked, Pippin, Godspell, & much else) in person, performing & speaking, along with guest artists (including the SF Gay Men's Chorus).

Popular Broadway musical Hadestown plays at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco from 21 to 26 April.

Several layers of "presents" here: ACT presents The Royal Shakespeare Company & Neal Street Productions presenting Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti & directed by Erica Whyman, at the Toni Rembe Theater from 22 April to 24 May.

Theater of Yugen presents its spring season of classical Japanese Kyōgen (performed in English); you can see Futari Daimyo (Two Lords) & Busu (Sweet Poison), directed by Lluís Valls, at Noh Space in San Francisco on 23 - 26 April.

Into Night Productions presents Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, directed by Jeffrey Hoffman, at the Phoenix Theater in San Francisco from 24 April to 10 May.

Shades and Shadows, a world premiere retelling of the Orpheus & Eurydice story, written by William Brasse & directed by CC Miller, plays at the Magic Theater in San Francisco from 30 April to 3 May.

Talking

On 14 April at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco, City Arts & Lectures presents poet Ada Limón in conversation with Alexis Madrigal.

Operatic

San Francisco Opera brings back its very popular Bohème Out of the Box, a series of "free, live performances of an abridged version" of Puccini's beloved opera, directed by Jose Maria Condemi with piano accompaniment; performances will be in San Francisco, Emeryville, Oakland, Woodside, & Concord; it's free but reservations are strongly recommended; check here for details on specific dates & times for the various locations.

Pocket Opera presents Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream in a world-premiere orchestral reduction, with music direction by David Drummond & stage direction by Nicolas A Garcia, on 17 April at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 19 April at the Hillside Club in Berkeley, & 26 April at the Gunn Theater in The Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

Carnival of Psychos, a "One-act opera with silhouettes, circus and a live band of carnies" by Samson Y Hiss, plays on 18 April at the Great Star Theater in San Francisco.

On 18 & 19 April in Hume Concert Hall, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Historical Performance department presents Handel's Alcina, with Corey Jamason as director & conductor, Elisabeth Reed as director, & Marcie Stapp as director & diction coach

Opera San José presents La Traviata, featuring Mikayla Sager as Violetta & WooYoung Yoon as Alfredo, conducted by Johannes Löhner & staged by Tara Branham, & that's 19 April to 3 May.

Choral

On 12 April at the Community Music Center in San Francisco, 21V (Martín Benvenuto, Artistic Director), & the New Voices Bay Area Transgender, Intersex & Genderqueer Chorus (Reuben Zellman & Jessalynn Levine, New Voices Bay Area co-directors) join together for Voices Taking Space, a concert featuring a world premiere by Robin Estrada. as well as pieces by Ted Hearne, Mari Esabel Valverde, & others, ending with the traditional Appalachian hymn, Will the Circle Be Unbroken; this concert marks the launch of 21V's Transgender Youth Choir Project & is free, though reservations are recommended.

On 18 April at Saint Paul's Episcopal in Oakland, Pacific Edge Voices led by Nicolas Dosman will perform Dreams of a Better World, a program centering on Rosephanye Powell’s The Cry of Jeremiah, as well as settings of Langston Hughes's I Dream a World  & other works.

On 24 April at First Congregational in Berkeley, Cal Performances presents the Tallis Scholars in Mysteries and Miracles, an Easter-time program featuring Victoria's Missa O magnum mysterium, Gabrieli's O magnum mysterium, de Wert's Egressus Jesus & his Ascendente Jesu, Thomas Tallis's Videte miraculum, Gallus's Mirabile mysterium, Guerrero's Maria Magdalena, & Arvo Pärt's Tribute to Caesar & his Virgencita.

On 24 - 25 April at Saint Ignatius, Robert Geary leads the San Francisco Choral Society in Rachmaninoff's All Night Vigil (Vespers) & the world premiere of Signs of Grace by Oleksandr Shchetynsky.

Vocalists

On 1 April in the Taube Atrium Theater, San Francisco Opera/Merola present the first of this season's Schwabacher Recitals, this time featuring soprano Mary Hoskins, baritone Olivier Zerouali, & pianist Ji Youn Lee.

On 9 April in Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents soprano Miah Persson with pianist Magnus Svensson, performing an evening of Nordic Songs, including works by Stenhammar, Grieg, Sibelius, Gösta Nystroem, Emil Sjögren, & Ture Rangström.

Orchestral

On 3 & 4 April in Hertz Hall, Wei Cheng leads the UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus, the University Chorus, & the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra in Verdi’s Requiem, along with other choral & orchestral arrangements.

On 4 April in Hume Concert Hall at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Edwin Outwater leads the SFCM Orchestra in the world premiere of Pierre Fontaine's Suite Occitane (the Highsmith Award Winner), Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, & the Sibelius Violin Concerto (with soloist Jeehin Kim).

On 11 April at Heron Arts in San Francisco, One Found Sound performs Fate Now Conquers by Carlos Simon, the Haydn 59, the "Fire", Aidan de Guzman's When Cherry Blossoms Burned (2025 Emerging Composer Award Winner), & the Beethoven 4.

On 17- 19 April, Simone Young will lead the San Francisco Symphony in Ella Macens's The Space Between Stars, the Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto #1 (with soloist Gautier Capuçon), & selections from Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung as arranged by Young.

On 19 April in Herbst Theater, the San Francisco Civic Music Association will be led by John Kendall Bailey in Beethoven's Egmont Overture, Max Richter's On the Nature of Daylight, & the Shostakovich 11, "The Year 1905"; the concert is free but RSVPs are appreciated.

Philharmnia Baroque will be led by violinist Shunske Sato in Kinks & Quirks, a program reminding us of how strange "classical" music can be, featuring CPE Bach's Symphony #3 in F major, Mozart's Incidental Music from Thamos, King of Egypt, Mendelssohn's Concerto for Violin and Strings in D minor (with soloist Sato), & the Beethoven 1, & you can hear it all on 23 April at Herbst Theater in San Francisco, 24 April at First United Methodist in Palo Alto, & 25 April at First Congregational in Berkeley.

New Century Chamber Orchestra, led by violinist Daniel Hope & joined by special guest guitarist Pablo Sáinz Villegas, presents Radiance in Rhythm, a program featuring the world premiere of a new work by Henry Dorn (commissioned by NCCO as part of the Emerging Black Composers Project), Piazzolla's Fuga y misterio, Michael Daugherty's Bay of Pigs, the Primera Suite Argentina by Alberto Williams, & Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez; & you can hear them 23 April at the Green Music Center at Sonoma State University, 24 April at First Presbyterian in Berkeley, & 25 April & the Presidio Theater in San Francisco.

On 26 April at Davies Hall, Yuja Wang will be piano soloist & director, along with Matthew Truscott, Concertmaster & Leader, of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, & they will perform the Prokofiev 1, the "Classical", Alexander Tsfasman's Suite for Piano and Orchestra (Jazz Suite), & Prokofiev's Piano Concerto  #2 (presented by the San Francisco Symphony).

Chamber Music

On 3 April in Hume Concert Hall at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Conservatory & the Naumburg Foundation present the Terra String Quartet (Harriet Langley & Amelia Dietrich, violins; Chih-Ta Chen, viola;  Audrey Chen, cello), the winners of the 2025 Chamber Music Competition, who will perform Juri Seo's String Quartet #2, "Overgrown Paths", Borodin's String Quartet #2 in D Major, Schubert's String Quartet #13 in A Minor,  "Rosamunde", & the first movement of Mendelssohn's Octet in E-flat Major, Opus 20  (for which they will be joined by Mark Chen & Cuna Kim, violins; Klara Kotarsky, viola), & Calvin Kung (cello).

On 7 April in Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents its annual gift concert for subscribers & donors (tickets go on sale to the general public on 19 March), this time featuring mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz, pianist Terrence Wilson, & the Catalyst Quartet (Karla Donehew Perez & Abi Fayette, violins; Paul Laraia, viola; Karlos Rodriguez, cello) performing Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Fantasiestücke for String Quartet, Opus 5, Libby Larsen's Sorrow Song and Jubilee, Dvořák's Goin’ Home (from the Largo of his 9th Symphony, “From the New World", as arranged by Noah Luna), & Elgar's Sea Pictures, Opus 37 (arranged by Donald Fraser).

The San Francisco Symphony has two competing chamber music recitals, both on the same day, both matinees: on 12 April at Davies Hall, they will present a chamber group of their musicians performing Steve Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood, Jean Françaix's Octet, selections from the traditional tune Last Leaf as arranged by the Danish String Quartet, & the Brahms Piano Quartet #3 in C minor, Opus 60, & also on 12 April Alexander Barantschik (violin), Peter Wyrick (cello), & Anton Nel (piano) will be at the Gunn Theater in the Legion of Honor, performing Haydn's Piano Trio in A major, Cécile Chaminade's Thème Varié in A major, Opus 89, Carl Czerny's Variations on a Theme by Rode, “La Ricordanza,” Opus 33, & Schubert's Piano Trio #1 in B-flat Major.

On 12 April at the Piedmont Center for the Arts, the Berkeley Symphony offers The Music of Muses, a chamber program curated by Juan Pablo Contreras showcasing music inspired by a muse of one sort or another, featuring Reena Esmail's Darshan, Beethoven's Für Elise, Jennifer Higdon's Blue Hills of Mist, the Finale of Smetana's Piano Trio in G minor, Opus 15, Anton Webern's Langsamer Satz, & Contreras's Musas Mexicanas.

On 12 April in Herbst Theater, Chamber Music SF presents the Quatuor Danel (Marc Danel & Gilles Millet, violins; Vlad Bogdanas, viola; Yovan Markovitch, cello) performing Mendelssohn's String Quartet #2 in A minor, Opus 13, Ravel's Quartet in F Major, & Tchaikovsky's String Quartet #1 in D Major, Opus 11.

On 14 April at Old Saint Mary's in San Francisco, Noontime Concerts presents the Mesa-Yakushev Duo (Tommy Mesa, cello, & Ilya Yakushev, piano) performing Debussy's Sonata for Cello and Piano in D Minor, Rachmaninoff's Vocalise, Kevin Day's Cello Sonata #1, Massenet's Meditation from Thaïs, & Ernesto Lecuona's Malagueña (arranged by Mesa & Yakushev).

On 14 April in the Barbro Osher Concert Hall at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Conservatory presents its monthly Chamber Music Tuesday, this time featuring cellist Clive Greensmith (formerly a member of the Tokyo String Quartet), who will join with Conservatory faculty & students to perform Debussy's Cello Sonata, the Sibelius String Quartet in D Minor, Opus 56, "Voces intimae", & the Brahms String Quintet #1, Opus 88.

On 14 April in Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents the Danish String Quartet (Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen & Frederik Øland, violins; Asbjørn Nørgaard, viola; Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, cello) playing Stravinsky's Suite Italienne (as arranged by the Quartet), Schnittke's String Quartet #2, & arrangements by the Quartet of traditional Nordic music.

On 16 April in Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents the Ébène Quartet (Pierre Colombet & Gabriel Le Magadure, violins; Hélène Clément, viola; Yuya Okamoto, cello), who will play the Beethoven String Quartet Opus 18, #2, the Debussy String Quartet Opus 10, & the Brahms String Quartet Opus 51, #2.

The Friction Quartet (Otis Harriel & Kevin Rogers, violins; Mitso Floor, viola; Doug Machiz, cello) will perform Inspirations, a program chosen by Harriel featuring Juhi Bansal's Cathedrals of Light, Loren Loiacono's Besides, Isaac Schankler's Unveiling, & Janáček's String Quartet #1, “The Kreutzer Sonata”, & that's 17 April at Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco & 19 April at the Berkeley Piano Club.

On 19 April at Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco, Noe Music presents A Change Is Gonna Come, a program featuring Palaver Strings & tenor Nicholas Phan in an exploration of American protest songs, including traditional anthems & contemporary works including Nico Muhly’s Stranger, Akenya Seymour’s Fear the Lamb, & the premiere of Errollyn Wallen’s Protest Songs.

On 25 April at Saint John's Presbyterian in Berkeley, Four Seasons Arts presents the ATOS Trio (Annette von Hehn, violin; Thomas Hoppe, piano; Stefan Heinemeyer, cello) performing Dvorak's Trio #4 in e-minor, Opus 90, the “Dumky” & Tchaikovsky's Trio in A-minor, Opus 50.

On 26 April in Herbst Theater, Chamber Music SF presents the Carion Wind Quintet performing Ligeti's Six Bagatelles, Haydn's Divertimento in B-flat Major, Medaglia Belle's Epoque in South America, Cavadlo's Klezmer Dances, Bartók's Romanian Dances, & "Additional pieces to be announced".

On 26 April at Old First Concerts, the Wooden Fish Ensemble (Thalia Moore, cello; Richard Worn, double bass; Thomas Schultz, piano) will perform an excerpt from Schubert's Piano Sonata in C major, D 840 & his Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano, D 821, Louis Moreau Gottshalk's The Banjo (arranged by Schultz), the world premieres of Kafka’s Hands & Pushing Open the Garden Gate by Hyo-shin Na, & her Walking, Walking.

On 26 April, as part of its Chamber Music Sundaes series, the Hillside Club of Berkeley presents the Navarro Trio​ (Tammie Dyer, violin; Jill Rachuy Brindel, cello; Marilyn Thompson, piano) performing Beethoven's Piano Trio in E-Flat Major Opus 70 #2, Joaquín Turina's Trio in D Major #1, Opus 35, & Schumann's Trio in D minor #1 Opus 63.

           

On 28 April at Old Saint Mary's in San Francisco, Noontime Concerts presents the Bridge Players (Amy Zanrosso, piano; Randall Weiss, violin; Dmitri Yevstifeev, viola; Victoria Ehrlich, cello) performing Mozart's Piano Quartet in G Minor, K478,& the Saint-Saëns Piano Quartet, Opus 41.

Instrumental

On 3 April in Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents clarinetist Anthony McGill with pianist Gloria Chien, performing Debussy's Première Rhapsodie, André Messager's Solo du Concours, the Saint-Saëns Sonata in E-flat major for Clarinet and Piano, Opus 167, the Schumann Fantasiestücke, Opus 73, & the Brahms Clarinet Sonata in E-flat major, Opus 120, #2.

On 7 April at Old Saint Mary's in San Francisco, Noontime Concerts presents pianist Neil Rutman, performing Sibelius's Impromptu in B Minor, Opus 5, #5, Mendelssohn's Andante and Rondo Capriccioso, Opus 14, Liszt's Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude, & Moises Moliero's Joropo.

On 10 April in Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents pianist Richard Goode performing Beethoven's Diabelli Variations & Schubert's Piano Sonata in B-Flat Major, D960.

On 12 April at Old First, Lieder Alive! presents Concert Confidential with pianist Jeffrey LaDeur, "a unique and ever-changing solo show . . . Featuring solo piano masterworks, anecdotes, comedy, and musical insight".

On 15 April at Davies Hall, the San Francisco Symphony presents violinist Nathan Amaral, with pianist Sophiko Simsive, in a recital featuring Mozart's Violin Sonata in B-flat major, Francisco Mignone's Valsa de esquina #2, & César Franck's Violin Sonata in A major.

On 18 April in Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents flutist Claire Chase as part of her Density 2036 project, a "24-year project to create a new body of flute repertory leading up to the 100th anniversary of composer Edgard Varese’s seminal 1936 flute solo, Density 21.5"; this concert will include Solo from Elwha! by Annea Lockwood (as arranged by Chase), Sunbird by Susie Ibarra (as arranged by Chase), a solo suite from Pan by Marcos Balter, An Empty Garlic by Du Yun, & Pulsing Lifters by Terry Riley (with special guest pianist Sarah Cahill) & the solo suite from his The Holy Liftoff.

On 19 April at Davies Hall, the San Francisco Symphony presents a recital with violinist Joshua Bell, along with pianist Shai Wosner; they will perform Schubert's Violin Sonata in A major, Grieg's Violin Sonata #3 in C minor, Opus 45, Prokofiev's Violin Sonata #2 in D major, Opus 94b, & Ravel's Violin Sonata #2.

On 19 April at the Presidio Theater, Chamber Music SF presents violinist Nathan Meltzer with pianist Wynona Wang performing Poulenc's Improvisation on Brahms’s “Wiegenlied”, Opus 141, Fauré's Violin Sonata #2 in E minor, Opus 108, Sky Macklay's FastLowHighSlow, & Schubert's Fantasy for Violin and Piano in C Major.

On 23 April in Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents pianist Alexandre Kantorow performing Liszt's Variations on Bach's “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen”, Medtner's Piano Sonata in F minor, Chopin's Prelude in C-sharp minor, Alkan's La Chanson de la folle au bord de mer, Scriabin's Vers la flamme, & Beethoven's Piano Sonata #32 in C minor, Opus 111.

On 29 April in Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents pianist Víkingur Ólafsson in Opus 109, a program exploring influences on & the influence of Beethoven's Piano Sonata #30 in E major, Opus 109; other works on the program include Bach's Prelude in E major from The Well Tempered Clavier, Book I, Beethoven's Piano Sonata #27 in E minor, Opus 90, Bach's Partita #6 in E minor, & Schubert's Piano Sonata in E minor.

Early / Baroque Music

On 3 April, the Berkeley Hillside Club presents Victor Romasevich in a program of solo Bach on violin & viola, featuring the Sonata #1 in G minor, BWV 1001, for violin solo; the Cello Suite #3 in C Major, BWV 1009 (arranged for viola solo), the Sonata #2 in A minor, BWV 1003. for violin solo; & the Cello Suite #4 in E♭ Major, BWV 1010 (arranged for viola solo).

On 3 April as part of its Candlelight Concert Series, the Episcopal Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in San Francisco will present Couperin’s Leçons de Ténèbres for Good Friday, featuring sopranos Ellen Leslie & Jennifer Paulino.

On 9 - 11 April at Davies Hall, Bernard Labadie leads the San Francisco Symphony in an all-Bach program, featuring his Easter Oratorio, the Sinfonia to Wir danken dir, Gott, BWV 29, & his 

Magnificat in D major, BWV 243, with vocal soloists Joélle Harvey (soprano), Hugh Cutting (countertenor), Andrew Haji (tenor), & Joshua Hopkins (baritone) as well as the Symphony Chorus, led by Jenny Wong.

The San Francisco Early Music Society presents The Qadim Ensemble, featuring "musicians versed in deeply-rooted musical traditions throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean basin", in Wandering Dove – An Offering of Hebrew and Arabic Song, which offers "liturgical and secular songs both in Hebrew and Arabic, in which the dove is the unifying motif", & you can hear them 16 April at First Presbyterian in Palo Alto, 18 April at First Congregational in Berkeley, & 19 April at Saint Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal in San Francisco.

Soprano Molly Netter joins the Voices of Music ensemble for The Secret Garden, a program featuring "[m]edieval, renaissance, baroque music and the world premiere of a new work" centered on the theme of the secret garden, & you can hear it all on 17 April at First Congregational in Palo Alto, 18 April at Old First in San Francisco, & 19 April at First Congregational in Berkeley.

On 18 April in Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley's University Baroque Ensemble, led by David H Miller, in collaboration with musicians from Boston Conservatory at Berklee, will give a semi-staged performance of John Blow’s Venus and Adonis; the show will be preceded by a panel discussion led by Miller on the original myth & its different versions.

On 21 April in Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI, joined by La Capella Reial de Catalunya, Tembembe Ensamble Continuo, & "special guest performers from Canada, Guinea, Guadeloupe, Mali, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela who place their rich musical traditions in dialogue with Spanish and European forms" in Un Mar de Músicas (A Sea of Music), a program that continues the themes of Savall's Routes of Slavery program "honoring the more than 25 million people enslaved by Western nations over close to four centuries" & the resulting cross-cultural musical results.

On 26 April, the Cantata Collective continues its traversal of Bach's cantatas at Saint Mary Magdalen's in Berkeley with performances of Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 20 & Die Elenden sollen essen, BWV 75, with vocal soloists Jennifer Paulino (soprano), Sara Couden (alto), David Kurtenbach Rivera (tenor), & John Buffett (bass).

See also Handel's Alcina at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, listed above under Operatic.

Modern / Contemporary Music

On 5 April in Wu Performance Hall in Morrison Hall, the UC Berkeley Music Department presents Tacet(i) performing new music by Tianyu Zou, Pablo Teutli, Claire Hu, Jenny Xiong, Wai Hin Ko, & Josiah Adrineda.

On 11 April in the Taube Atrium Theater, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players presents American Reflections: Steps Toward Ascent, a program featuring Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Music for Small Orchestra, Seare Ahmad Farhat’s Muzzahaimat (a title which comes from a word meaning “the state of being disturbed”), Vivian Fung’s Ominous, & Steve Reich’s Jacob’s Ladder.

On 10 - 11 April, composer Gabriella Smith will be curator for the San Francisco Symphony's Sound Box concerts.

On 12 April in the Taube Atrium Theater, San Francisco Performances presents the Attacca Quartet (Amy Schroeder & Domenic Salerni, violins; Nathan Schram, viola; Andrew Yee, cello) with Caroline Shaw on violin & vocals, performing music by Shaw: Blueprint, Cant voi l’aube, Three Essays, And So, The Evergreen, & Other Song.

On 16 April at the Goldman Theater in the David Brower Center in Berkeley, Other Minds presents The Nature of Music 20: Eleven Paths to Animal Music, featuring the title work by musician & philosopher David Rothenberg.

On 17 April in Cha Chi Ming Hall in the Bowes Center of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Ensemble for These Times & the Conservatory present Women Crossing/Liminality, a program featuring four world premieres: "a new song cycle for soprano, cello, and piano by Juhi Bansal, a new work for bass flute and percussion by Vivian Fung, a new work for violin, cello, percussion, tape, voice, and electronics by Pamela Z, and the winning piece from the E4TT/TAC student competition", as well as pieces by Leilehua Lanzilotti & Sofia Jen Ouyang.

On 18 April at Saint John's Presbyterian in Berkeley, Earplay presents music by Peter Josheff (who is also the clarinetist for this group, among others).

On 24 - 25 April at the Community Music Center of San Francisco, you can hear The Retraction, a dramatic song cycle for soprano, three-voice choir, & mixed ensemble with music & text by Davide Verotta, focusing on the case of Isobel Gowdie, a 17th century Scottish peasant who confessed (most likely under torture) to being a witch; the performance features Amy Foote (soprano), Emilio Peña (tenor), Tim Selva (tenor), Sidney Chen (bass), Michael Long (violin), Jessie Nucho (flute), Vicky Ehrlich (cello), Keisuke Nakagoshi (piano).

Jazz & World Traditions

On 4 April at Herbst Theater, the SF Jazz Center presents the Ravi Shankar Ensemble (Shubhendra Rao, sitar & ensemble leader; Aayush Mohan, sarod; Ravichandra Kulur, flute; Padma Shankar, violin & vocals, Anubrata Chatterjee, tabla; B C Manjunath, Mridamgam); this is the first in a "new annual concert series presented in honor of our friend and tabla master Zakir Hussain".

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band plays the Presidio Theater from 9 to 12 April, with special guest Karl Denson on the first two days & special guest Ivan Neville on the last two.

On 10 - 12 April at the SF Jazz Center, the African Rhythms Alumni Ensemble (TK Blue, alto  saxophone, flute, kalimba; Ku-umba Frank Lacy, trombone; Sharp Radway, piano; Alex Blake, bass; Chief Baba Neil Clarke, percussion) perform a centennial tribute to Randy Weston.

On 15 April at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, you can experience Coltrane 100, a centennial celebration of the seminal saxophonist, featuring saxophonists Joe Lovano & Melissa Aldana, pianist Nduduzo Makhathini, bassist Linda May Han Oh, & drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts.

On 25 - 26 April at the SF Jazz Center, Allan Harris (on vocals & guitar), joined by Bruce Forman (guitar), Sylvia Cuenca (drums), & Marcus Shelby (bass), celebrates The Poetry of Jazz, with "works spanning centuries and genres, from William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Dylan Thomas to the poignant voices of Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou."

On 30 April at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Hume Concert Hall, the Conservatory presents pianist Billy Childs in a Big Band performance with faculty & students from the RJAM (Roots, Jazz and American Music) department; the concert will feature the world premiere of a new work by Jordyn Davis, a winner of the Emerging Black Composers Project, as well as Labyrinth & Do You Know My Name? by Childs, & other works to be announced.

Dance

From 7 to 12 April in Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances hosts the annual visit of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, who bring four separate programs, including both old favorites & new works; check here for details.

The San Francisco Ballet has two programs this month: Program 5, running from 10 to 16 April, is La Sylphide, with choreography by August Bournonville to music by Herman Severin Løvenskiold in a production designed by Helgi Tomasson; & Program 6, running from 24 April to 3 May, is a revival of Mere Mortals, with choreography by Aszure Barton to music by Floating Points.

On 11 - 19 April at the Yerba Buena Center, Alonzo King LINES Ballet presents a world premiere collaboration between Alonzo King & esperanza spalding, who will perform live at all performances; the program also includes a revival of King's Ode to Alice Coltrane.

ODC/Dance & Volti revive their popular Path of Miracles, inspired by the Camino de Santiago, with choreography by KT Nelson & Volti singing Jody Tablot's score, on 15 - 17 April at the Saint Joseph's Arts Society in San Francisco.

Smuin Ballet presents Future Forward, a program featuring world premieres by Amy Seiwert & Andi Schermoly, along with Sextette by Kate Skarpetowska & Hearts Suite, an excerpt from Hearts (Le Ballet des coeurs) by Michael Smuin, & that's 17 - 265 April at the Cowell Theater at Forst Mason in San Francisco, 1 - 2 May at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, & 14 - 17 May at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts.

On 17 - 19 April in Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents The Joffrey Ballet in the west coast premiere of a loose adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, choreographed by Alexander Ekman to a new score by Mikael Karlsson, with featured vocalist Anna von Hausswolff.

Mostly Museums

Chiharu Shiota: Two Home Countries, featuring a Japanese artist known for "immense, intricate webs of thread", opens at the Asian Art Museum on 3 April & runs through 20 July.

On 12 April, the Berkeley Historical Society & Museum opens On the Waterfront: The Other Side of Berkeley, a look at the surprisingly dramatic history of an often-overlooked part of the city.

On 18 April, SFMOMA will unveil Reimagined: The Fisher Collection at 10, "a fully reconceived presentation of the renowned Doris and Donald Fisher Collection, featuring nearly 250 works by 35 artists"; part of the revamp will be Ways of Seeing: Fourteen Artists, including "Dan Flavin, Philip Guston, Roy Lichtenstein, Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, Elizabeth Murray, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra and Cy Twombly. Through audio, video and written panels that incorporate the artists’ own words, visitors are invited to understand the artists as both innovative creators and as people, in their full complexity", & Memory and Matter: Personal and Collective Histories, highlighting Anselm Kiefer & William Kentridge,

Cinematic

On 4 April, as part of its Disney Restoration series, the Orinda Theater will be showing Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

On 9 April at the Castro Theater, you can see a 40th anniversary showing of Return to Oz, which the website describes as "an underrated cult classic" & I could not agree more; with director Walter Murch  will be there in person & the film is followed by a Q&A with Murch, led by Jesse Hawthorne Ficks.

BAM/PFA launches a couple of series this month: Sentimental Education: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha at the Pacific Film Archive runs from 2 to 19 April & features works by Cha as well as some films that influenced her; the series is in conjunction with the exhibit Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings, which closes on 19 April; Lucrecia Martel: Un destino común runs 4 to 19 April in conjunction with the director's residency at UC Berkeley.

From 13 to 19 April, the Balboa Theater in San Francisco will celebrate its centennial with a series of special screenings "spotlighting the work of the famed costume designer Aggie Rodgers"; check here for details.

The San Francisco International Film Festival runs from 24 April through 4 May; check here for schedule announcements.

This month's Classic Movie Matinee at the Orinda Theater will be The Magnificent Ambersons from Orson Welles, one of the famous or notorious examples of Hollywood's butchery of a director's work, & that's on 28 April.

Friday Photo 2026/13

 

pigeons, not on the grass. alas

Museum Monday 2026/12

 

detail of some of the "documentation and ephemera" of the performance piece A Ble Wail by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, seen as part of the special exhibit Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings at BAM/PFA

Friday Photo 2026/12

 

a calla lily, after rain

Museum Monday 2026/11

 

detail of a Mayan Vessel with jaguar and fish, now at the de Young Museum

Opera Parallèle & Cal Performances: La Belle et la Bête

Several years ago, coming out of the pandemic, Opera Parallèle presented Philip Glass's operatic take on Cocteau's magical fairy-tale film from 1946, La Belle et la Bête; I missed that production but fortunately a revised version was given a two-day run in Zellerbach Hall (I saw it last night) under the auspices of Cal Performances. Opera Parallèle has now performed all three of Glass's Cocteau operas (the other two are Orphée & Les Enfants Terribles); La Belle et la Bête is a bit different from the other two in that rather than a stand-alone stage recreation of the film, it is meant to run alongside the original as an alternative soundtrack (& in fact it is available as such on the Criterion blu-ray release of the film).

The Zellerbach stage was set with six different screens, three on top & three below. Their sizes & the line-up were balanced but not symmetrical; the middle screen on the top, the largest of the six, showed Cocteau's film. The smaller screen below usually showed the film as re-shot with OP's personnel (chiefly baritone Hadleigh Adams as the Beast/Prince & Avenant & soprano Chea Kang as Belle). The two screens flanking the top screen showed fragments & close-ups of the Cocteau film & the two flanking screens on the bottom showed other OP performers (chiefly mezzo-soprano Sophie Delphis as the stepsisters & baritone Aurelien Mangwa as Belle's father, her brother Ludovic, & the moneylender) or appropriate scenes related to the mood or setting of the scene (such as re-creations of the stone faces with blinking eyes from Beast's castle). The screens each had an ornate frame, as if around an artwork, while the top center screen, the movie screen, had none, making it look like a regular movie screen, while the others with their fancy frames reminded us of the artistic eye & placement guiding everything we were seeing, a note of the artificial & aesthetic which reinforced Cocteau's plea, at the beginning of his film, that we have the conscious sophistication to watch it with the unsophisticated but therefore farther-seeing eyes of a child open to magic.

In addition to the action being shown on the screens, the performers also enacted some of the scenes on stage, often alongside their filmed selves or Cocteau's originals. One of the beauties of the staging was how it reflected the film's intentions; in the scene in which Belle first enters the Beast's castle, in which she floats weightlessly down dim & eerie halls, Kang somehow managed to recreate the effect without camera tricks, moving with incredible dancer-like lightness down the stage along with Josette Day's original on the screen above. The interplay between the original film, the OP re-creations, & the physical performers was so seamlessly done that it seemed inevitable; it's only later, when the inevitable noise & distractions of the after-theater world start to rub away at the enchantment, that you realize how incredibly difficult it must have been to pull all of this off, how much work & organization it takes to get so many different components both mechanical & human (the different sets of films, the lighting, the singers, the orchestra) to click into place with dream-like inevitability.

It has been years since I last heard a recording of this opera or last saw the movie (that happens when you're overloaded with movies & music). I had forgotten how marvelous the score is. As is well known by both those who love & those who dislike this composer (I'm in the former camp, obviously, otherwise I wouldn't have gone to this performance, particularly with its ridiculous 8:00 PM start time), his music has a very distinctive & even unmistakable sound; but though the whole opera "sounds like" Philip Glass, each scene reflects an appropriate, often strikingly distinct, mood: uncanny, yearning, threatening, frightening, touching, elevating. The segments of the score move along with cinematic speed, like camera cuts. Certain melodies that are on the border of big Romantic tunes regularly appear & float off before they develop too far, reminding me of the unresolved musical longing in Tristan without ever echoing or parodying that distinctive score. (One of these tunes in particular, one that lent a touch of the "exotic" to the score, reminded me of one of the Borodin tunes used in the musical Kismet). Glass has written a number of fairy-tale chamber operas (The Juniper Tree, The Fall of the House of Usher – the latter is of course based on Poe's "horror" story, but is a sibling of the fairy-tale world) & he is adept at creating memorably unworldly worlds. There is a wide range of moods produced from a relatively small orchestra, one that is mostly keyboards, percussion, & wind instruments (no strings! as a friend in the mezzanine reported to those of us below). The final moments, with the transformation of Beast into Prince, are accompanied by what sounded to me like an organ, offering that instrument's sacred & otherworldly aura for his apotheosis with Belle.

As usual with Opera Parallèle, Nicole Paiement conducted, & as usual, she led a clear & beautifully judged rendition; Brian Staufenbiel was, again as usual for OP, the director & the guiding hand behind the production concept, &, again as usual, thought & care had gone into a visually arresting & creative presentation (aided by the production design & film work by David Murakami). Delphis & Mangwa brought distinctive edge & depth to each of their characters. Kang & Adams were both superb. Her clear & lovely voice echoed & reinforced the distinctively innocent & loving Belle. Adams was a virile & anguished Beast, his voice skillfully softening as Beast is tamed by love or raging up as he is threatened. You realize how insightful & controlled his performance is at the end, when he resumes human form as the Prince, & though the handsome Adams looks appropriately princely there is a very slight, very subtly & astutely judged, sense of self-pleased placidity, a touch of royal entitlement, that reminded me of the story that when Garbo first saw Cocteau's film, she is said to have slumped down in her chair & murmured, "Give me back my Beast."

I also have to note the astonishing work by Sharon Peng & Natalie Barshow in recreating respectively Beast's make-up & his & Belle's sumptuous costumes for the stage & OP film scenes.

The audience . . . they were generally attentive, though I could hear some whispering & someone down the row from me kept pulling out his or her phone & flashing some light (checking the time?). Those were relatively minor things; the opera, done without intermission, was about an hour & forty-five minutes, which is not a long time in a movie theater but which for some reason seems like a long time for people at a live performance (it doesn't help that Zellerbach is an uncomfortable hall). But though the audience seemed appreciative, giving the performers well-deserved & hearty applause at the end, they also seemed, as a whole, & I realize I'm sliding out onto some thinnish ice here, not quite to get the mood & therefore the meaning of the piece. There was quite a bit of laughter at various points that struck me as appreciative but uncomprehending, starting with the scene in which Belle's Father, who has wandered into Beast's castle, sits down to dinner & is unnerved by the disembodied hands that hold the candelabras down the hall & that serve him at the table. Cinematically these are fairly simple tricks, but effective nonetheless, if you enter into the unreal enchantments of the tale. (I will say that I find such tricks, not just from Cocteau but even more so in the films of Méliès, far more beautiful, moving, & effective than the shiny plastic fakery of computer-generated effects in current films.)

Maybe the audience laughed because they were expecting Mrs Potts, Lumiere, & Co to launch into Be Our Guest? I don't say this to be dismissive of the wonderful Disney version of the story, but though the animators clearly studied their Cocteau, their film has a different mode & mood. There was also quite a bit of laughter, not quite mocking but also not quite comprehending, of various love-story lines at the end, & I was at a loss to figure out what was supposed to be funny. This is a fairy tale, not a sitcom or a Hallmark "romance". During the scene in which the guileless Belle is led into giving her siblings some of the Beast's magic secrets, a woman in the row in front of me whispered (very loudly whispered) that Belle was . . . she said either stupid, or a fool, or a word to that effect. Reading innocence & trustfulness & guilelessness as stupidity is exactly the attitude Cocteau asks us to consciously though perhaps only temporarily renounce while watching his enchantments. He is very clear in his statement at the beginning of his film that he wants the audience to approach this story with an openness that draws on a purity & innocence usually crushed out by or at least hidden away from the social & adult world. We are certainly meant to appreciate the sophistication of all the artists involved, the silvery cinematography, the lovely surrealist touches, the artificiality of our suspension, which is perhaps only temporary, of our usual civilized skepticism. But it is only by doing so that we can truly grasp the anguish of Beast's dark & deliquescent heart, & the beauty of Beauty coming to love him.